Velocity Micro + Overdrive PC - Now that the dust has settled...

[flurp]

I'm just curious what the consensus is on this purchase, especially from the perspective of the consumer.

At the time this was all going down, I was starting to do research on my next machine. I decided I was going to hold off on seriously considering VM until they had worked out the kinks of their new business plan. I see it kind of like buying anything that is the new model. There are going to be bugs.

So, does anyone have thoughts or feedback on how the purchase has impacted these two companies?

 

[michael.pa2]

What I have noticed is a considerable drop in VM's consumer ratings and an increase in customer complaints in this and other forums.It may be due to the increased workload caused by the purchase of Overdrive,combined with them now marketing their systems in national outlets like BestBuy and Circuit City.A case of too much too soon,perhaps.

 

[Velocity_Micro]

If I'm permitted to chime in, I think I have spent more time answering this question for my own personal benefit than anyone. This is just one guy's opinion, of course.

The impact from the OPC perspective is that Overdrive has gone a bit quiet in the marketplace so far, but the company is very alive and well in it's new home. Mario is focusing his attention between developing new product identities for OPC, adding the intellectual property he brought us by way of Hyperclocking to VM for our mainstream and retail systems, and settling in to a new world of possibilities he has before him now. You should expect to see updates to the products, and more extensive overclocking than ever, with a far better support infrastructure than he used to have.

On the VM side, adding the volume from OPC orders was not a substantial obstacle, but redirecting and retraining our best builders over was a tiny bit challenging at first, but great now. We have benefited from the technology we gained from OPC, and Mario's team had amazing abilities to produce improved BIOS's, benchmarking and testing scripts, and even diagnostic tools that are better than anything we have seen available. Overclocking is now far easier for our builders to do with 100% confidence - to the point we can even build high volume orders for retailers! Also, having high-level conversations with Mario about the PC platform, it's future, the competition, and future strategies has been enlightening and invigorating on a weekly or daily basis. He's an amazing talent!

For the combined organization, it's certainly true we've seen more dings on this and other forums this year. We are very aware of this! Overall, our customer satisfaction has remained consistently very high, but we have learned that mad customers are learning that venting on forums seems to get our attention quicker than e-mail, and it is quickly becoming a forum of choice. It's regrettable that we have customers that are sometimes not thrilled - that is our goal - but they seem to be much more vocal than the thousands of happy customers we satisfy every month. This may sound like a cop-out, but we don't see our return rates increasing at all, quite the opposite.

About retail, we know there is a customer that will only drive down to the local electronics store and take a computer home today, so making our products available as a choice for them is a simple and manageable extension of our brand growth. The last thing I would ever choose to do is allow our quality to decline in an effort to grab a quick buck. The long term cost would not ever make sense.

I'm very anxious to hear other people's opinions!

Randy

 

[ditzilla]

*snip*

The last thing I would ever choose to do is allow our quality to decline in an effort to grab a quick buck. The long term cost would not ever make sense.

I'm very anxious to hear other people's opinions!

Randy

*end snip*

OK, Randy, you want other peoples' opinions? IMHO, there has been a decline in quality. My older, only thing really added at the time was 1 year onsite warranty(should have made that longer) and the New Vm I bought ... well, I see a difference in quality. And since I don't give an opinion good or bad on something without my own reasons/experience, here's why I have this opinion:

I bought a GM1000 over black friday weekend due to free shipping, etc. Had some extras added along with 3 year warranty (see sig - I bought the 1000, but ProMagix is what it says on My Computer/Properties/General). This computer has been nothing but a headache since the day I got it. I think mostly it's the motherboard - the Asus with the bizarre onboard "usb" sound.

I specifically stated when ordering and in a follow-up email that Norton was NOT to be installed. It ended up taking well over an hour on the phone with the cable company when I tried activating windows, cause it couldn't/wouldn't find an internet connection. Drove the tech there insane ... once he got me going and the desktop appeared, first thing I see is a big yellow Norton icon sitting in the middle of my taskbar. Cable company said that was probably causing at least part of the problem.

Flav saved me alot of angst when I was talking to him about the audio problem and mentioned Norton and that I was going to uninstall it. He got me to the right page with the uninstaller, said if I'd just used add/remove programs that I'd probably not be able to access the internet at all. I can understand that slipping by - installing Norton. I can't understand no audio drivers being installed.

When I got the computer it had NO audio drivers installed. Couldn't figure out why I was getting no sound. Called, got Flav who had me look in Devices and read what was listed, told me there were no drivers, emailed me a link to c-media and a zip driver file. It was late, I was now frazzled, kinda spazzed out and confused ... why no drivers and why was he sending me to c-media? Called back, got Robyn who basically talked me down, calmed me down, walked me through the c-media driver installation ... got this gawdawful snapcracklepophissstatic. So she had me uninstall those drivers, sent me to the Realtek driver page, d/l those, install. That got me sound for about 5 minutes ... until I plugged in my external hd. Basically plugging or unplugging anything usb meant uninstall/reinstall sound drivers - and sound was horrible no matter what except for those glorious 5 minutes.

Called back, got Flav again, he was curious why Robyn would have had me put Realtek drivers in instead of c-media. Well, in looking at my order form late last night I now know why. Because that's what's listed on the order and listed as being the onboard audio - Realtek, not c-media. My second conversation with Flav was much smoother too, once he realized he was dealing with a "tech noob". I can't say enough about Robyn or Flav and their willingness to help in whatever way they could. They're wonderful, patient, knowledgeable, and unwaivering in their efforts to make sure things are right.

I now finally have the soundcard Robyn and Flav had to fight to get me, at the loss of the front headphone/mic jacks. That just irks me ... loss of the front jacks. What irks me more is that getting the soundcard took close to 3 weeks. In fact I ended up going out and buying a cheap soundcard just so I could listen to anything or go on "the air" as the owner kicked me off the server, the onboard was that bad (snap, crackle, static, buzz) ... and the sound still isn't quite right. Yes, I uninstalled the old drivers, used CCleaner, all that and I used Creative's autoupdater. Sound is VERY important because I'm an online dj and use Sam3. Music sounds ok, but that's partly because it's going through an encoder. Voice? still not great, a touch "echo-y" and alot of echo when I talk over music - which I do sometimes (backing tracks, etc.) and I can no longer use the off-air "cue" feature for blending on Sam - I hear nothing - which I was able to do on my older GM1000 with A8N using nVidia/Realtek onboard sound via front jacks. And Sam is now "stuttering" if I have more than 2 windows open. And, yes it is configured properly.

I'm using cable internet, I clear everything every day, use disk cleanup, run all my scans at least once a week, use CCleaner once or twice a month ... if I install/uninstall anything I run it then too. defrag once a month (yes I've already defragged this one and it needed it). I'm getting slowdowns, momentary computer "freeze-ups" where nothing will open or close, hung apps and it just doesn't seem like the whiz-bang fast, able to handle more than a few windows and a program running. I've also trimmed down what is running on startup/in the background in general. I may be a noob, but I do know to check those things. Not using Vista, so can't blame that and not playing nicely with things.

Now, Video ... have the VM 8600 graphics card ... in the middle of a page of text or graphics I'll get (text) a "cutoff" line of text with part of it kind of like this but reversed and graphics will look "broken". I've reseated the video card, as I couldn't even get the DVI adapter to completely screw into the plate on one of them - the card was in slightly crooked - not enough so it wouldn't work and I'm not sure how it worked being even just a touch crooked - but it did. I've tried 3 different DVI adapters - the ones sent with the computer, the one James sent me (an evga) and one from radio shack. This is with 2 different monitors - a 17" Viewsonic and a 15" Samsung - both flatscreen, and using different resolutions - same problem. Of course I have ss of the problems

So basically, I've spent close to $1,700 on a computer that works ... but it doesn't work well. I'm not quite sure why I or anyone else should have to jump through all these hoops, open the case, have to buy or wait, then install/uninstall/reinstall components/drivers on something that's now just a tad over a month old. This just doesn't seem right to me. Phone tech support great, anything needed above that? big headache.

Now, my older (1 1/2 y/o GE 1000) was sent in to be fixed (onsite portion of warranty over), paid over $40 UPS ground shipping to get it to you. Got it back, what needed fixing was I think, but I'm really not quite sure yet. Why? When I unboxed it and took the foam off the front of the computer ... the font cover fell off with the foam. Only 1 of the pins is actually all in one piece. Also, the socket for the vga monitor was ripped off the back of the computer. I'm assuming this was done because the older video card is no longer being used and the card was upgraded. Notification would have been nice, though I honestly don't understand why the A8N board (which wasn't changed) would have needed this done. My monitor had no problem being plugged into the blue socket on the back of the mobo.

Finally, once I got the cover hooked just enough so it wouldn't fall off just by touching it, I booted up (at this point afraid I didn't get MY computer back until I saw the desktop - and someone apparently had fun looking through stuff, judging from the My Documents recently opened list). On attempting (my first time trying this) to network the 2 computers I found that my floppy no longer works.

I know for a fact that it did before being repaired (I DO still use floppy for certain things and had backed up a few documents onto floppy before sending it in) and yes, I've checked the connection, as the harddrive connector had come unplugged in shipping ... talk about heart failure booting up and seeing Fatal Disc Error)

Spoke with James on December 14 ... He immediately sent me a new front cover and a DVI adapter for the old computer and put in an order for a new floppy drive to be sent to me. Guess what, it's Januay 3 and I've yet to see the floppy. Just like the soundcard issue with the new computer.

Someone is asleep at the wheel. Or they're trying to save the company money on repairs. I'm sorry, but that's how I feel. The new computer was, imho, thrown together. Unless you're paying holiday overtime - the order placed on Saturday and UPS tried to deliver Thursday - with no notice of anything from VM that it was even completed - that would mean the new computer was probably built Monday and boxed/shipped Tuesday, as it takes usually 2 days for UPS ground to get things delivered. So I have to wonder whether there was and what the burn-in/testing/inspecting time was. The motherboard is a nightmare - there are numerous complaints about the C-Media onboard usb sound and how it's a problem even after installing a soundcard (especially Creative, which the X-Fi has it's own issues) ... because it's seen as hardware. Try it, grab a computer with that motherboard and the c-media, uninstall the drivers then reboot. Windows will find a new audio HARDWARE device. This aside from the fact that that's not what was shown on the specs list. And the fact that there weren't any audio drivers even installed when it arrived.

I note on VM's site that you're not even offering anything with that motherboard and what seems to be a similar motherboard now comes with Realtek AC onboard sound instead of the c-media. Unless of course it IS still the c-media and once again, the specs shown on the site are incorrect. But yees, I did hit the ceiling when I saw that. That tells me I'm not the only person who's had a problem or who continues to have problems. And I feel like those of us who bought when we did and what we did are stuck with this crummy thing.

Right now I have 2 not fully working/not working up to potential computers, one of which I've just started paying for.

Whoever is in charge of getting parts to customers needs to have a meeting with staff ... I'm not pointing fingers OR blaming the phone techs. They (Robyn, Flav, James in particular) have all gone out of their way to help me. The problem with parts seems to start and continues once they send in an order for something to be shipped that they don't have on hand/don't have authority to send ... or whatever the policy is.

Also, this may be small potatoes, but I can tell you that 2 sales were lost between my struggles with the new computer and seeing the old one returned and watching the front fall off. Not anything else ... just seeing that was enough.


I know, I wrote a novel. But you did ask for opinions, right?